Prehistopia
Prehistopia was an Xobor-based forum designed to be a place for peaceful, troll-free discussions. In its time, it was the 4th largest forum used by the community (Topix, Paleo Place, and Imperial Palace are larger). Prehistopia, despite a high level of security, was hacked and destroyed on July 29, 2010 History Origins The origins of Prehistopia can be traced back to 31st December 2009; at that time, the Topix dinosaur forum was in ruins. There had been 3 destructive wars, and an invasion of trolls, which had scarred the forum forever. Emperor Pincus Shain, the leader of the troll army challenged Spinosaur King, the former leader of the forum council, to a fight. Spinosaur King obliged, and the two dueled. The fight lasted 4 days, but on the 3rd January 2010, Spinosaur King was defeated, put on trial and exiled from the Dinosaur Forum. As a result, he fled to Paleo Insanity, a Xobor forum created by Stigimoloch as a refuge for the suvivors of Topix to flee to in saftey. Meanwhile, the 3rd Topix war continued, and more users fell, and fled to Paleo Insanity, nicknamed PI. Then, on the 9th of January, Spinosaur King noticed that Stygimoloch, Paleo Insanity's administrator, was not posting often, and had not been online for 5 days. At the same time, two new accounts had signed up, one of which was Pincus Shain. Spinosaur King fled back to Topix, but found only a warzone. The troll empire ruled, all the good threads had been polluted and flushed out, and they had been replaced by troll ones. Spinosaur King was attacked immediately, and he once again fled from the forum. In a desperate attempt to find a safe place for him and his friends, Spinosaur King decided to make his own forum. Spoiled for choice with dozens of forum makers to choose from, he chose the same site from which Paleo Insanity was based, Xobor. He created a board on 10th January 2010, designed the template, and created the first sections. Spinosaur King spent the next three days in exile from Topix, while constantly tweaking his new forum and editing the layout. Then, on 13th January, while the war on Topix continued, Spino King returned to Paleo Insanity, only to find that it was being abandoned, in favour of Topix. He went to Topix, and saw that the users were engaging in another battle with Pincus and his troll army. Spinosaur King announced the official end of Topix War 3, and the cease fire of all Topix insurgency forces. He then posted a thread, letting all the users know about his new forum, while at the same time announcing his "retirement" and departure from the Topix Forums. Spino King then left topix and waited on his new forum. Within minutes, the first users, Ohyeah Spinosaurus and Lord Of The Allosaurs, arrived. Less than an hour later, more users, such as Spinodontosaurus also signed up. The first topics were started on the forum. Then, there began a breif conference as to what the forum should be called. Eventually, the users agreed on a name, Prehistopia. Spinosaur King edited the page title, forum name, and began editing some other settings. And so, on 13th January 2010, Prehistopia was born. Early Weeks Prehistopia continued to gain members over the following few days. On 15th January 2010, Pincus announced that all troll operations on Topix would cease imediately. He also announced that the troll army would be releived of their duties, and the troll empire would disperse. Pincus made up a set of guidelines for certain users to follow, that said that Spino King and Ohyeah must not return to the forum unless they were to contribute, and not "Troll". If this agreement was broken, Pincus threatened to bring back the troll army. Spinosaur King returned from his exile, and totally ignored this condition, and began taking part in topics again. Prehistopia began gaining more posts and more users, like PaudieN1 who signed up towards the end of January. Unfortunately, more trolls arrived on Topix, such as IHTR, who had returned from exile. The dinosaur forum once again came under attack, while Prehistopia stood un-disturbed. In late January, the trolls on Topix were fended off, and, on 1st February 2010, the topix dark ages came to an end, and Paudie became the new, unofficial "leader" of the dinosaur forum. He created the "Hitlist" thread for reporting trolls, and designed his new system to replace the fallen forum council, and keep the forum flowing smoothly. Meanwhile, Prehistopia grew in size, and soon rivalled Paleo Insanity. In Mid February, a group of users (Spinodon, LOTA and Spino King) went back to Paleo Insanity to check on the forum. What they found was not good. Over 20 spam accounts had signed up, and were destroying the forum with advertisements. Good threads were being flushed out, and Stygimoloch, the forum admin had recently (within the past few days), abandoned the forum. They fled back to Prehistopia, and stayed there. Then, other users, such as Spinoacrothosaurus (now known as Acrospinosaurus) joined from Youtube after an invitation from Spinodon. Prehistopia grew in size and stregnth, and the users enjoyed a peacefull first month on the forum. The best months lay ahead. Golden Age February on Prehistopia was a good month; most of it was spent growing the forum. In early March 2010, the Prehistopia empire was formed, and included Prehistopia, and the newly created Prehistoric Wiki, as well as its counterpart for modern animals, known as Organisms Wiki. Inevitably, the forum would come under attack from time to time, but all of the threats were fended off. The first threat came in Late March 2010 from IHTR who had just returned to Topix. The former troll was blocked from creating an account. In early April, Spam Bot 1.0 attacked the forum, managed to sign up for an account and started spamming Prehistopia. He was soon banned, and his posts were removed. The forum saw many arguments between Ohyeah and Paudie, but after Spam Bot 1.0, for a while, Prehistopia was peacefull again. However, the arrival of May signalled the end of the good days....... Troll Crisis On 1st May 2010, Satans Troll 100 arrived on Topix. He soon spread to Prehistopia, and began trolling the forum with insults. He was soon banned, but was then followed by Spam Bot 2.0, who was much stronger than his predecessor, Spam Bot 1.0. The bot spammed the forum alot, but was also banned. In mid May, a strong, former troll called Kill Yourself arrived. He insulted many users via PM, and trolled the forum, almost conquering it, but was banned when the admin, Spinosaur King, came back. The forum came under bombardement from many other trolls, but managed to stay strong. Spinosaur King appointed Lord Of The Allosaurs as assistant administrator in late May 2010. In May, Ohyeah Spinosaurus left the forum. He was posting very rarely, then suddely left. His departure shocked many users, and he was missed for a long time. On 1st June, PaudieN1 founded Paleo Place, an alternative forum to Prehistopia. At first, the forum was not very successful, because Prehistopia was already an established forum. Last Months By June 2010, Prehistopia was in its hayday. New threads were still being created regularly, and many discussions were almost constantly on-going. However, after a while, many of the members began visiting left often. The forum slowed down dramatically, but it continued as normal. The two administrators, Spinosaur King and LOTA, managed the forum well. Then, in July, many trolls began attacking the forum, like Psycho Spot, for the second time. He was swiftly banned, and never returned. Then, later in July 2010, 2 mysterious acounts signed up. The first, called Phil, which later proved to be Tommy 15994. Then, a few days later, a second acount signed up. This account remained inactive for the first day or two of its existence, but it would not remain this way for long..... Hacking On July 26, 2010, an account known as "Gaminglord" registered on Prehistopia. Spinosaur King activated the account, and it remained inactive. The next day, it returned, and continued to silently view the forum, studying the users, learning of their history, and other information. During the last days of Prehistopia, discussions continued between the users as normal. Little did they know that an attack of great magnitude never seen before by the community was almost upon them. On July 29, 2010, "Gaminglord" found the piece of crucial information he had been searching for, and sent a PM to LOTA, telling the assistant administrator that he was Spinosaur King, and that someone had hacked his old account. Believing that Spinosaur King's original account was being used by a hacker, LOTA immediately gave Gaminglord admin rights. Aequitas imediately began looking around the administration panel and all of its menu's, familiarising himself with how it worked, the layout, and where everything was. He then swiftly deleted Spinosaur King's account, followed by the moderators, and then all the other users. Once this had been achieved, Aequitas changed his name from Gaminglord to Aequitas the Eliberator, and locked the forum. He then posted a message on Topix, and held Prehistopia for randsom, demanding that Ohyeah and Spinosaur King surrender and admit to trolling (Spino King, supposedly, as Giganotosaurus Fan), otherwise he would destroy the board, and never return it to Spino King. Spinosaur King refused, and reported Aequitas to Topix, but nothing was done. Because of Spinosaur King's refusal to cooperate, Aequitas then deleted the board's sections, changed its settings, and completed the destruction of the site. Frustrated at Spino King's stubborness, Aequitas declared the site's demise on Topix, and then vowed that he would make Spino King's internet life a misery by making his entire family and all his friends suffer. Spinosaur King ignored these insults and taunts. Spino King posted an urgent help message on Xobor's support forum, Aequitas also attacked this site, but was swiftly repelled. Xobor refused to fix Prehistopia, unless Spino King would pay them 40-50 (and then even around 100 euros), which Spinosaur King could not afford. The Prehistopian leader simply removed all of the troll sections, banned Aequitas and posted a message on the board, with a link to a new forum that he had created to succeed Prehistopia, Imperial Palace. Aftermath Imediately after the hacking of Prehistopia, the comunity was driven to Topix in search of answers. When they heard the news of the hacking, the entire community was shocked, and many users began attacking Aequitas on Topix. The once tightly knit community of Prehistopia fell apart rapidly, and many users fled to Paleo Place, Paudie's forum, as a place where they could continue discussing. The remaining pocket of users were left to fend for themselves, and even thet began visiting Paleo Place more often. Defeated, Spinosaur King decided against going into exile, and created a new forum, Imperial Palace to replace Prehistopia. Imperial Palace, compared to Prehistopia, grew in size very slowly (due to the fact that the comunity had been seperated, and many had gone to Paudie's forum). The site slowly began gaining new members, but discussions often became stale, while Paleo Place now flourished. Many attempts to gain new members were made, but most failed. Eventualy though, Imperial Palace did succeed in gaining 2 or 3 new members, and the forum became almost as active as Paleo Place. The true golden age of Imperial Palace began in the spring of 2012. Several new contributors arrived on the forum from Topix, and their postings helped Imperial Palace recover from its activity lag. Imperial Palace is now the second-largest forum used by the community, with almost 20,000 posts, and is sometimes referred to as the "child" of Prehistopia.﻿ Forum Prehistopia was a large and secure forum. Intended as an alternative to Paleo Insanity, it was large, and flowed smoothly. Trolls that arrived were often banned within a day of their arrival, or until they broke the rules more than three times. Unlike Paleo Insanity, which was mainly focused on Prehistory debates, Prehistopia had no specialty and was intended for general discussions, and it had topics on nearly every subject imaginable. It was also one of the most secure forums on Xobor. Unaccessable to guests, the forum was further kept safe by the fact that a user's account had to be activated by an Administrator before being used, and that a security code was required to protect against automated spam (although two advanced spam bots, programed by an army of trolls, did manage to infiltrate Prehistopia once). With strict rules and comforting guidelines, the vast majority of the Prehistopians were valuable contributors. The forum thrived from its first day to its last, and is remembered as a safe, comforting forum with a thriving community. See Also *Paleo Insanity *Paleo Place *Imperial Palace *The Prehistopian Empire *Prehistoric Wiki *Organisms Wiki Category:Xobor Forums Category: Abandoned/Reorganized Forums